Using virsh I think you can execute commands directly: try :

virsh pause domain

Or something like that... At least this is what the manpage for virsh says :

virsh [OPTIONS]

Good luck!

You're right but I think the syntax is

virsh suspend <domain>

But can i use virsh even starting the vm directly with the kvm command? I mean i am not using virsh to start the virtual machine, can i still use it afterwards? Thanks.

You won't be able to use the virsh ( and other tools that use libvirt ) to manage your virtual machines unless they're started using them. BTW, you may have noticed that the virsh also has a save command that you can use for saving your virtual machine state to file. ie. virsh save <domain>.

If you want to start managing your current vms with the tools that use libvirt so that you can write scripts, you can create an xml file describing your current vms, store them in /etc/libvirt/qemu, then starting using the libvirt based tools and writing scripts using virsh.

My problem for using virsh is that i am not able to make it start the virtual machine with a usb device on, like the option -usbdevice host:0000:0000 that i can use using the qemu command directly!

How are you starting your machine with virsh? What version of libvirt are you using? Can you paste your xml config file?

Xml config file:

#############

winxpsp3
88b47238-6149-c624-5adf-e90b8e16d6d2
1048576
1048576
1

hvm

destroy
restart
destroy

/usr/bin/kvm

####################

libvirt version:

0.4.0-2ubuntu8

I am starting the virtual machine thru virt-manager. How can i change the xml file so it runs usbdevices?

Thanks a lot.

.
. winxpsp3
. 88b47238-6149-c624-5adf-e90b8e16d6d2
. 1048576
. 1048576
. 1
.
. hvm
.
.
.
. destroy
. restart
. destroy
.
. /usr/bin/kvm
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Sorry, this is the xml file. Please do not consider the . caracter on each line beggining.

Doesn't work, it loses the format everytime!

USB support will be supported by libvirt AFTER version 0.4.4 which is the current release so there's no support for it at the moment. Remember virt-manager, virsh, virt-viewer etc all depend on libvirt so until libvirt supports it, you won't see it in virt-manager. Even when libvirt does begin supporting it, virsh will probably be the first tool to support it as it's probably easiest to add new features compared to graphical tools.

However, although libvirt doesn't yet support it, the syntax has already been established and is as follows:

<hostdev mode='subsystem' type='usb'>
     <source>
         <vendor id='0x1234'/>
         <product id='0xbeef'/>
     </source>
</disk>

This is an example taken directly from the official libvirt page. You can find this information at the following link.

http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsUSB

I've updated the comment box with an fckeditor tool that allows formatting of your posts so you can paste xml format and source code. Use the "Formatted" Format and be sure to choose "full html" as the input format just below the comment box.

ugh, old thread, but you can access the monitor by telnet even if you use VNC if you start like this:

kvm -daemonize -vnc :41 -m 128 -hda hda.qcow2 -usb -usbdevice tablet -net nic,macaddr=00:DE:AD:BE:EF:41 -net tap,ifname=tap41,script=no -monitor telnet:127.0.0.1:9941,server,nowait

critical part:
"-monitor telnet:127.0.0.1:9941,server,nowait"

so you have VNC at port 41 (with guest screen, serial console...)
and you can telnet to port 9941 to access the mgmt console.

from a script you can send comands with netcat, like this:
----------------------------------
blackmolly:~# cat /VMs/vmsendcmd
#!/bin/bash
monport="99"$1
cmd=`echo $@ | cut -d" " -f2-`

echo $cmd | nc -q0 localhost $monport >/dev/null
----------------------------------

eg:
vmsendcmd 41 stop

HTH